License to Steal
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: this is the one in which Finnick and Johanna are thieves...   completely AU


Whoever he is – and Johanna is sure her nemesis is male – he's already been here, taken the prize she'd planned meticulously for weeks would be hers. Or at least hers for long enough to sell the damn thing. "Mother _fucker_." It's the third time in as many months, and it's getting old. She looks around the dark bedroom, past the safe the bastard left hanging open – "That is just sloppy." – toward the neatly made bed and the cluttered dresser beyond that. Maybe she'll find something in the mess of the dresser that will at least make coming here tonight something other than a total waste of her time.

She slips down from the window-sill and makes her silent way toward the dresser. Since she has to pass by the safe, quietly mocking her, she flashes her light within, just to make sure it's empty, but it isn't. She reaches in and removes the piece of paper resting inside.

_Next time, Mason, hide your tracks a little better._

"Are you kidding me?" Seething, Johanna crumples the piece of paper and slips it into her pack. She's going to find out who he is if it's the last thing she ever does, and once she does, it'll be the last time he ever snipes her again. She slams the safe shut, secure in the knowledge that the Cranes are out on the town, still celebrating another successful Hunger Games. They'll be gone until dawn, if not later.

She heads past the end of the bed, her light trained on the dresser, searching for anything of value. There's a vase that looks promising, and a glint of gold beside it…

xXx

The next afternoon, Johanna starts making serious inquiries. And she is very careful not to leave any tracks. It takes three days of greasing palms and promising favors, but she finally comes up with a name: Finnick Odair. She's heard the name before, always in conjunction with that of some rich mark, but never put two and two together until now. Once she has a name and starts matching that with dates and missed opportunities, everything falls into place.

And he's good. She'll give him that. But when she meets up with him, she's either going to kill him or partner up with him. Which option will depend on how much he pisses her off.

It's easy to break into his apartment a few nights later. Having determined beforehand that neither the building nor Odair personally has any security system to speak of, she simply picks the lock and walks right in. After exploring a little – decent taste in music and art, atrocious selection of liquor, all of it sweet, and an almost embarrassing amount of clothing and accessories – she settles back into an overstuffed chair with a glass of rum, the only thing in the apartment that's at least palatable, to wait. She doesn't bother to turn off the lights; she wants to see his face when he walks in and sees her there.

She's on her second finger of rum when she hears the key turn in the lock. Her heart beats faster in anticipation, but nothing else happens. The door doesn't open. There's no other sound from the hallway. "Shit."

She waits for a minute, listening, thinking that maybe she should have turned the lights off after all, then sets her drink on the table beside the chair and starts to stand. Before she completes the motion or makes any kind of move that could be considered evasive, he's there, coming at her from behind. He has one arm around her throat and her own arm cranked up painfully behind her back before she can stop him. Johanna can't help but admire his speed, although his cologne is a little much.

"Tracked me down, did you?" His breath is warm against her neck.

"Don't flatter yourself, Odair," she grits out. "It wasn't that hard." He laughs, shifts his weight without lessening the pressure against her throat or on her wrist. She uses the brief distraction to pull the folding knife from her hip pocket and flick it open, stabbing the two-inch blade into the meat of his thigh.

"Fuck!" he shouts, but he doesn't let go as she'd hoped. Instead, he twists, shoving her down into the chair and straddling her, his knees to either side of her hips. It's a big chair. He pulls the knife from his leg and flings it across the room; she hears it skitter across the hardwood floor. "You stabbed me!" Ignoring his bleeding leg, he manages to get hold of both of her wrists, pinning them to the back of the chair above her head.

She meets his eyes, which are a pretty amazing shade of green; she can't help but wonder if the color is natural. "You piss me off." His face is close enough she could kiss him, if she were so inclined.

"I piss you off? You broke into my apartment. And you _stabbed_ me. I'm the injured party here."

"You stole from me."

"I steal from a lot of people. You'll have to be more specific."

"Really? You've been stalking me for weeks." She shifts in an attempt to loosen his grip on her wrists. She doesn't like feeling trapped.

"Really. Who are you and why are you in my apartment?" He shifts back, tightening his hold. There's a glint of amusement in his eyes that wasn't there before and she knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he knows exactly who she is. Just to see what kind of response she gets, Johanna kicks up as hard as she can, given that he's sitting practically on her knees. Pain replaces his amusement and there's a growing wet spot, warm on her own thigh that can only be his blood soaking into her jeans.

"You might want to think about bandaging that," she suggests with a smirk. "I hope I didn't hit anything important."

He glances down at the slice in his leg and Johanna again takes advantage of the momentary distraction to jerk her arms free, bringing the heels of her hands in sharply against the sides of his head. She shoves him backward and he tumbles from the chair, landing hard on the table, which collapses under his weight, but he still manages to tangle his ankles with hers and she comes down on top of him.

"That hurt," he accuses, wheezing a bit as he catches his breath.

Johanna glances down at him, enjoying this new position immensely. When he moves to shove her off, she settles in on him more firmly, wrestling his hands above his head and pinning them there, which brings her face into close proximity with his.

She grins. "It was supposed to." Their eyes meet and her grin fades at the look in his eyes and suddenly Johanna realizes there is going to be kissing – "Shit…" – mere seconds before he stretches up to catch her lower lip between his teeth. He draws blood. _Only fair_, she thinks before she stops thinking entirely.

For the next couple of minutes it's all tongues and teeth and salt skin, racing pulses and rushing hands and blistering want until Johanna shifts, starts working at his belt and Finnick cries out in pain when she knocks against his leg. She pulls back, fingers still on his belt. He looks a little dazed, kind of pale beneath the tan. With a mental shake to start her brain working again, she asks, "First aid kit?"

He blinks. "Bathroom." His voice is rough.

"Where?"

He nods his head vaguely toward her right, his left, and she pushes herself up, a hand to his chest. It isn't until she's standing upright that she realizes he managed to unfasten her bra; she pulls it and her shirt off on the way to find the first aid kit.

When she returns with the kit and a wet cloth, Finnick is gone, but there's a light on in another room off the living room, so she heads that way. The window behind the chair she was sitting in is open and she's pretty sure that wasn't the case before she first heard the key in the lock. "Tricky bastard," she whispers.

He's lying naked on the bed. She stops in the doorway to his room and just stares for a moment, her mouth suddenly dry. He grins at her and his eyes drop to her bare breasts. There's a hitch in his voice when he says, "Just thought I'd make it a little easier for you to patch up the hole you made."

She steps into the room and kneels beside the bed. The wound isn't large, but it is deep and oozing blood. "I don't sew," she tells him.

He laughs. "A pressure bandage should be fine," he replies.

Working quickly, Johanna wipes away most of the blood, then covers the wound with an antiseptic gel from the first aid kit before covering it with a thick cotton pad and wrapping his thigh with gauze to hold it in place. He props himself up on his elbows and watches her work, and when she's finished, he reaches out one hand, lightly brushes his fingers along her neck and shoulders, making her shiver.

"Come here," he whispers and that makes her shiver, too.

"Are you still up for this?"

A lopsided grin and a laugh, deep, purely male – "What do you think?" – and she sees that, yes, he is still up for it.

She stands, skims off her jeans and underwear, joins him on the bed, careful not to jostle his injured leg when she straddles his hips, leans down to kiss him, bare nipples brushing bare chest. She sucks his tongue into her mouth and he skims his hands lightly over her breasts, her stomach, down to stroke between her thighs. Bracing herself on one hand, she closes her other around his erection, squeezing, not caring about the somewhat awkward position when he starts to hum with pleasure.

Breaking the kiss, he shifts to suck at the pulse point beneath her jaw and she's sure he's going to leave a mark. Trying to leave a mark. Again, she doesn't care. He strokes a finger into her and then another and she bites his chin, straightens up, lowers herself onto him slowly, but then he bucks up into her hard, his fingers digging into her hips as she rides him, harder and faster until he comes with a gasped "Jo!" escaping his lips. She collapses on top of him a moment later, biting his shoulder as her whole body feels like it contracts around him.

When she can move again, she shifts, slides down beside him on his uninjured side. She rests her head on his shoulder – the same one she bit – one palm flat on his chest, her legs tangled up with his. He draws aimless patterns on her back and shoulders with the tip of one finger while he stares up at the ceiling.

"You know," he says, "there's this great little art museum about a block from the President's mansion that I've had my eye on…"

She smiles against his chest. "I know exactly the place."


End file.
